


A 10-Letter Word That Begins With F

by 3wisellamas



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: Gen, a rare Ernesto fic!, short and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 16:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16998648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3wisellamas/pseuds/3wisellamas
Summary: Ernesto gets stuck on a crossword puzzle.





	A 10-Letter Word That Begins With F

"And then I jump off and double-blaster them!"  
  
Darrell hopped a couple of times in excitement as he followed behind Shannon.  "So, you think we can do it, Sis?"  
  
"Well..."  Shannon paused, considering the plan.  "It has been a couple of weeks since we last did a combo attack."  
  
She glanced back at her brother and sighed.  "I'll do it, but only if you don't yell 'Yee haw' when you jump off of me this time."  
  
"Shannon, now you know I can't promise y'all anythin' like that."  A sassy smile spread across his face. "Once this cowboy rides outta the stable, there ain't no going back!"  
  
She cupped her face in her hands as the two entered the kitchen for breakfast.  "Cob, why can't you just get back into your 'nya' phase already..."  
  
Darrell pouted at her reaction, but then his eye widened as he looked towards the table behind his sister.  "Ernesto? Are we, like..." He quickly double-checked his system clock. "...super early today or something?"  
  
"Yeah, usually you're already at work by the time we get up."  Shannon turned around to examine the unusual scene, with their older brother still slouching at the table with his morning coffee untouched.  
  
"No, you're on time.  I just..." Ernesto barely acknowledged their presence, instead looking sadly down at the newspaper in front of him, folded to display the daily crossword puzzle.  "I'm stuck."  
  
"Stuck?"  Shannon squinted a little in surprise.  "They finally made one too hard for you?  No way!"  
  
"It's true.  I can't figure out this last word."  Ernesto sighed, then pointed out the clue to himself as he read aloud.  "'A bond of camaraderie between two or more people.' There's ten letters, and it starts with 'F'..."  
  
His younger siblings craned their necks around his wide shoulders to get a better look at the puzzle.  
  
"I even thought about solving other ones around it to get more letters, but for some reason they put this one word all by itself."  
  
"Ten letters?"  Darrell ran his claws across his braincase a few times, a figurative attempt at scratching his head.  "How about...um..."  
  
"Coworkers?"  Shannon interrupted.  "No, that's nine, and it starts with a C."    
  
"This really is a tough one, Ernesto!  I dunno either!"  
  
"Well, that's okay."  Ernesto turned his eye downward.  "Perhaps I'm just not meant to solve them all..."  
  
"Ooh, wait!"  Darrell pointed towards the empty squares.  "Domination is ten letters!"  
  
"That starts with a D, Glass-Brain."  Shannon rolled her eyes. "Just like your grades."  
  
"We don't even go to school..."  Darrell protested.  
  
Shannon grabbed a can of oil from the fridge.  "That's because Daddy knows if he sent us you'd get us all kicked out for failing."  
  
"That's not true!"  
  
Ernesto silently stood and dumped out his cold coffee into the sink as the two settled into what he counted to be their fourteenth sibling squabble this week, and grabbed his newspaper to finish later.  It wasn't worth getting in between them, he mused, they'd tire themselves out eventually.  
  
As he made his way down the hall to the sounds of yelling and a single loud 'ting' as an empty oil can bounced against glass somewhere behind him, the unsolved crossword clue ran through Ernesto's mind.  He repeated the words over and over to himself -- "bond of camaraderie," "two or more people."  
  
None of the words the robot could think of began with F, let alone were ten letters long.  
  
_Ugh, this can't be right_ , he thought as he rounded a corner and approached the factory offices.  Perhaps he made a mistake somewhere?  
  
He paused for a second in the hallway to glance again at the word containing the starting F.  Nope, no mistake there -- a five-letter word for a skidding, frequently sideways motion one would make in an automobile in Neo-Tokyo was indeed a drift.  The F had to stay; he remained stuck.  
  
Ernesto hung his head in a mixture of defeat and confusion, but his thoughts were interrupted by the factory's shift whistle blaring in the distance.  He would just have to get back to the puzzle after work.

  
  
\---

  
  
_Franchisee, perhaps?_  
  
Ernesto quickly dispelled the thought as he entered a few more recent sales numbers into a spreadsheet.    
  
Another word interrupted his focus.   _Favoritism?  No, no, that can't be right either._  
  
He took stock of his disappointing progress so far on the screen.  Normally he would be finalizing these sales reports and delivering them right to Lord Boxman for approval, but it had already been an hour since he’d started and Ernesto still had a long way to go.  
  
_Fraudulent?_  
  
The robot shook his head.  He was just distracted, that's all.  It happens.  
  
_But not to me.  I don't get distracted,_ Ernesto assured himself.  It was time to stop thinking about that puzzle he had casually laid on the desk next to him.  Nope, it wasn't a distraction at all. In fact, he could throw it away and be just fine!  
  
He extended a metal hand over to the desk and shoved the newspaper aside, grabbing the next printout of sales figures he would need to copy into his spreadsheet.  
  
In fact, he didn't even need to throw away that puzzle in order to prove it had no power to distract him.  He was just that un-distractible.  
  
_Foundation?  Fiberglass?_  
  
Ernesto sighed.  Yes, he reluctantly realized, he was indeed distracted.  In fact, exactly 36% distracted -- the percentage came up as he took a moment to run an audit on his hivemind to determine how much of his processing power was being dedicated to figuring out that final word.  As he finished the audit, that number ticked up to 37%.  
  
It was no wonder every cell Ernesto filled on his spreadsheet seemed to be taking longer and longer, his normally laserlike focus completely scattered by the words running through his processor.    
  
He glanced again at the newspaper on his desk.  
  
That unfinished puzzle seemed to glare back.  
  
_All right, that's it._  Ernesto opened up a browser and typed 'camaraderie between people 10 letter word begin with f' into the search bar.  It was cheating, but he simply couldn't focus on his work until those other nine boxes were filled, one way or another.  
  
Immediately a corporate firewall message popped up, warning Ernesto that his search was "unauthorized," "disgusting," and "against Boxmore's corporate values."  The browser redirected him to a photo of Lord Boxman's scowling face.  
  
"Oh, come on!"  He slammed his metal palms down on the keyboard, and sighed.    
  
_Now what?_  There was no way he was going to figure out the solution on his own by just thinking of random 10-letter words.  His siblings had been of no help, and his innocent search was apparently worth blocking. Where else could he turn to finish this puzzle and finally, _finally_ start his workday?  
  
The answer was staring, or rather scowling, right at him, Ernesto slowly realized as he looked back up at his monitor.  If nothing else, Lord Boxman could at least yell at him to get back to work, and help redirect his fragmented focus off of that cursed puzzle!    
  
He hastily grabbed his newspaper and jogged up the hall towards Boxman's office.

  
  
\---

  
  
"Ernesto, just the one I wanted to see!"  As he robot entered, Lord Boxman's chair suddenly spun around to reveal his excited face, and in the process he barely missed kicking Professor Venomous right in the shin.  "You've got that sales report, right?"  
  
He jabbed the still-stunned professor in the side.  "I told you it wouldn't be more than a few minutes. Ernesto’s like clockwork!"  
  
"N-No, actually I, uh..."  Ernesto fidgeted a little with the newspaper in his hands.  All of the fastidious preparations he'd made in the hallway fled almost immediately, and the robot stuttered and strained to explain his intrusion.  
  
Boxman noticed the robot's unusually anxious demeanor, and smacked his hand down onto the desk, startling Ernesto out of his thoughts.  
  
"Well, what then?  What's the problem?  Paper jam? Software glitch?"  He looked Ernesto over. "You look perfectly functional to me."  
  
"Lord Boxman, it's just, uh..."  He sheepishly held out the newspaper.  "I, um, I can't s-seem to finish this, and...and it's keeping me...d-distracted."  He closed his eye, begging for more words to successfully make their way to his speech synthesizer.  "I was hoping you would know the last word. Sir."  
  
Boxman's annoyance turned to confusion as he studied Ernesto's offering.  
  
"A...crossword puzzle?  Are you serious?" He snatched the paper from Ernesto's hands.  "You're telling me you didn’t get your work done, because you didn't finish your crossword this morning?"  
  
His eyes widened as they finally focused onto the unsolved clue, and Venomous took advantage of Boxman's pause to peek over his shoulder at the puzzle as well.  
  
The professor studied the missing word for only a second, and smiled.  "Oh, Ernesto, this one's not so bad. I think the answer is 'frie-'"  
  
Boxman interrupted him by ripping the newspaper in half, then again, and again, until it was little more than strips in his hands.  He looked back up at the robot, a forbidding look in his organic eye as an insincere smile spread across his face.  
  
"Ernesto 3511," he started, flawlessly addressing the robot by his proper unit number, "can you please explain to me _why_ you thought you could bring this...thing into my office?"  He growled as he waved the torn pieces in his hand a few times, before releasing them to scatter across the floor.  
  
"S-Sir?"  Ernesto squeaked.  
  
"Box."  Venomous lightly placed his hand onto the agitated man's shoulder.  "We talked about this, remember? Take a few deep breaths."  
  
Boxman obliged, drawing in a deep breath and visibly calming, as Venomous turned back to the robot.  
  
"Now, it's okay that you're a little behind, Ernesto."  He smiled patiently. "I think we can give you a couple more hours on that report."  
  
" _A couple?_ " Boxman interrupted again, but resumed his breathing with a stern glance from Venomous.  
  
"Just...try to let go of that puzzle for now, okay?"  He kicked at a few of the paper scraps on the floor. "There'll be another one tomorrow morning, and I know you'll solve that one no problem."  
  
"Yes, I know you will."  Lord Boxman appeared to have slipped into a better mood, but a lingering harshness still colored his words, at an imperceptive depth only Ernesto truly grasped.  "We'll see you in a couple of hours."  
  
Ernesto tried and failed to reply, and nodded.  Words simply stopped working for him at long last, and he quickly left the office behind, as Venomous waved him off and Boxman shot him one final glare.  
  
The latter stuck in the robot's mind as he returned to his cubicle and resumed his work, with not only his spoken words but also the possible puzzle solutions no longer clogging his processor.  
  
Fear was indeed quite the effective focus aid.

  
  
\---

  
  
As usual, Ernesto was up promptly at 5AM the next morning, and began his routine of coffee, reading the business section of the newspaper, and of course, his daily puzzle.  
  
This time, however, he skipped the crossword and instead opted for the day's Sudoku.  
  
"So this is a five, which means that can only be a three, and then this is a one..."  The robot's pen flew as it took mere minutes to finish the entire puzzle. He sighed, and glanced at the blank crossword, then around the empty kitchen.  
  
_Dare I?_  
  
He had finished far earlier than ever before -- there were still three hours to waste until the official start of his day, his internal clock reminded him.  Surely, he wouldn't run into the same problems this time?  
  
Ernesto gleefully permitted himself to look over the clues, and before he realized it he'd yet again finished all of the words the puzzle, without any of the difficulty he'd had the day before.  He sat back, relieved, and leaned back in his chair to revel in his accomplishment.  
  
He allowed his mind to wander a bit.  
  
... _Fraternity?  That might have been it._ He smiled internally, and got up to start his work for the day.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Activity: Go back up and reread, and see how many 10-letter words starting with F you can count! *wink*


End file.
